The Food and Drug Administration said Saturday it will block
shipments of pomegranate seeds from a Turkish manufacturer over a hepatitis A
outbreak that's swept up two Oregon companies and sickened about 130 people.

The agency said in a news release it had traced the outbreak to frozen organic pomegranate seeds from Goknur Foodstuffs Import Export Trading. The
hold prevents that company, based in Ankara, from exporting the seeds to the
United States.

The move is unusual. Though the FDA routinely detains food that tests positive for harmful pathogens, it rarely blocks imports based on a food safety investigation.

So far, lab tests have not found the virus in the pomegranate seeds, which were part of the Organic Antioxidant Blend produced by Townsend Farms in Fairview. They were also packaged and sold by Scenic Fruit Co. in Gresham as Woodstock Frozen Organic Pomegranate
Kernels.

The FDA determined the seeds in the mix caused the outbreak based
on an epidemiological information obtained by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention and an investigation of the supply chain. Many of those sickened were infected with a strain of hepatitis A that's
common in North Africa and the Middle East but rare in North America.

Besides pomegranate seeds, Townsend's blend contained berries from Chile and Argentina and cherries from Washington state. Bill
Gaar, Townsend's attorney, said the cherries and berries have not been associated with any other outbreaks.

"This outbreak highlights the food safety challenge posed by today's global
food system," said Mike Taylor, the FDA's deputy food commissioner. "The presence in a single product of multiple ingredients from
multiple countries compounds the difficulty of finding the cause of an illness
outbreak."

A FDA spokeswoman declined to comment on what the agency will do now. In the past, it has lifted food safety holds after the foreign company showed its products were safe.

The
seeds were purchased from Goknur by Purely Pomegranate, Inc., in Dana
Point, Calif., which resold them to Townsend Farms and Scenic Fruit Co.,
in Gresham. The FDA declined to comment Saturday on whether any other companies bought the suspect seeds.

On Friday, Townsend Farms expanded its recall of the frozen blend in response to the FDA investigation. It is now pulling frozen 3
lb. packages with best-by dates running sequentially from T122114
through T053115, followed by a letter. All letter designations are included in
the recall.

And Thursday, Scenic Fruit Co. recalled 8 oz. packages of the frozen seeds, produced for Woodstock Foods in Providence, R.I.

Though the seeds were sold in both products in Oregon, state health officials have not received any reports of illness connected to the outbreak. Those sickened are in eight states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Wisconsin.